Dave Winer, 56, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and editor of the Scripting News weblog. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

At its core it's TwitterFeed, but it tries to be more general, with the concept of "routes" and the beginnings of a powerful configuration system.

I find it interesting because I was working on such an idea a few years back with Betaworks for a product called Switch-A-Bit, that was much more ambitious. However, we couldn't get something that was comprehensible. I came away from it thinking that ultimately what you want here is a programming language, and all attempts to find a balance betw an interactive interface would eventually lead back to programming.

BTW, bit.ly got its name from Switch-A-Bit.

Also interesting to note that bit.ly and TwitterFeed just merged. Good idea. Feeds and URL-shorteners belong together.

All these services need to support rssCloud, imho. I know they've nuzzled up to Google by supporting PubSubHubBub, but please support RSS too. I'm sure you will.

Sooner the better.

Also, if the developers of dlvr.it are around, I'd be interested in knowing where you're taking it.

I'm not asking you to support "standards" -- I think that's a shortcut we don't need to take. The incentive is that I'm putting out a fair amount of good stuff, imho, and I'm making tools that others will be able to use, so there's a cow path to be paved here that leads somewhere good. Plus if you support it, you almost certainly get me on board as an evangelist.

I thought I should make my proposition explicit.

And of course the prop is open to Twitter as well. I've made it before, but the door remains open.

I did it two times last August and it was great! Gives you an idea of what the city might be like if we created places to ride without having to deal with cars.

Tomorrow is one of those Saturdays. And the weather is forecast to be spectacularly nice. Not too hot, and clear. I'll be out on my bike. I'll be the nerd in the silver helmet. If you see me, say hello!